The body did a good job pretending to be at ease. Helping Randall up as soon as he landed on the sandy bottom of Hazimon's training chamber. His mouth spitting up the fine grains as his eyes rushed to get them out of his eyes.

"He did that (Traitor) on purpose!" Randall protested.

The body healed him without saying anything. Gesturing upwards with his eyes towards the spot where Hazimon was standing. His back to both of them.

Unlike before, his chest and torso were bare and exposed. His symbiote only covering his lower half and now taking the appearance of a series of rags tied together with red strings.

Meanwhile, in another place, things were relatively calmer. The couches looked supple and comfortable. No doubt they would have been if they hadn't all been thinking and begging for release. The cushions were much the same and I was having trouble restraining myself from merely ordering them to die, or otherwise drown the dimension in Psy to degrade the Veil and summon a horde of my Intruders.

Though my host didn't seem altogether worried about the prospect.

The female shape next to me saw all of him on the illusory screen I'd conjured and tittered.

"My oh my. How positively delightful." It snickered. Acting much like a human woman would if she were flirting.

Her hair was a platinum blonde and her face was unnaturally gorgeous. The very outline of her body seeming to capture the attention of everyone present. Both free and enslaved. Everything from her arms and legs, to the curves on her hips and chest, seemed to scream lasciviousness and desire. Having formed into the very picture of what every teen boy dreamt up in their minds when they first grew into adulthood.

It was getting old. Indeed, it had gotten old after the first few minutes. But my host did not seem to care.

Or more likely, he did care and he was just enjoying my discomfort.

"Oh Sully, I don't know if you know, but that's the traditional attire old Kenari used to don pre-System. When they were going to undergo Krav-Kenar. A ritual fight to the death."

He tittered again.

"Oh he's mad. Really mad." He shivered with delight. Throwing himself against the cushions and laughing with gusto. Hands curled around his belly as he pretended to wheeze and run out of breath.

"I can see that." I responded dryly. Choosing to stand nearby.

"Oh don't be like that Sully! Sully! Don't sulk Sully boy!"

He stretched his hand and patted my shoulder. His touch making Buddy tremble and shiver uncontrollably.

"Mess with my Symbiote and the deal is off." I spoke in an even tone.

The hand retracted at once. His face turning into a false pout.

"Oh aren't we a sourpuss Sully." He waved around. "I'll have you know, I do not like sourpusses in my home."

"You'd endure any amount of disrespect if it meant you got what you wanted in the end." I shrugged. "You're putting up this whole act. Pretending to have fun. Like it's all some kind of game to you. It's getting old."

"Aw, you got me!"

His limbs elongated again and his fingers began poking me in the ribs.

"I'll do just about anything at this moment! But that doesn't mean I'm pretending to have fun Sully! Why, on the contrary. This is the most fun I've had since…"

He paused.

"Nope! Actually, I can't recall the last time I had this much fun!"

He pointed back at the screen.

Giggling in that feminine tone again and squeezing his own body. Writhing as if in the midst of ecstasy. So that the Symbiote he had draped about him struggled to contain his human… assets.

"Look at him!" He roared. "Look at the look on his face Sully! Oh my goodness! He's (Noble)ed off! He's (Noble)ed out of his mind!"

That was true enough at least.

On the screen, facing Randall and the Body, Hazimon loomed like a warlike deity. Like one of those old idols of pagan gods. Their hands and weapons painted bloody red.

He wasn't acting aggressively per se, but the stiffness of his posture seemed to change the very world about the body. As if he were the very center of a black hole. Everything from matter to Psy revolving around him like water in a sink. Being drawn inwards by his mere presence.

Hazimon's eyes finally locked together with those of the body and those of Randall. Causing the latter to shiver and shake.

My host descended into hysterical laughter once more.

"He's gonna do it! I swear it! I know that face! The stupid old (Noble)er is gonna do it!"

"You don't know that." I snapped. Despite more or less knowing he was right.

"Oh but I do know that my dear Sully! Why, me and old Hazi-boy go back a long way! I know him better than most of his followers! Better than his daughter! Better than his Divine apprentice! He's (Noble)ed this whole thing up with that hubris of his and he doesn't even know it!"

He laughed again. Twisting around the couch as it transformed into a massive, well-cushioned bed.

"I don't know if I'd be talking about hubris if I were you." I commented. "Seems a bit hypocritical."

"Hush now love." He waved me away. Almost blowing me a kiss as he did so. "It's not hubris if it's warranted. No sir. It's only well-founded pride. And why wouldn't I be proud Sully? I have literally won against an entire empire by doing literally nothing! I have won against all the Savants who ever lived by doing nothing! I am the single greatest (Noble)ing thing in this entire multiverse!"

"And you're humble too. Lest we forget." I quipped. Though the sarcasm washed right over him.

"Exactly! And I'm humble too! That's why I got myself an ally and a lover worthy of me! While sourpuss Hazi-boy got shafted so hard he can't walk straight!"

He laughed.

I shivered then. Though I did not dare activate [Social Hunter IV] at this critical juncture. Lest my so-called ally take that as an act of aggression.

"I am not your lover." I informed him sternly. "I don't know where you'd even get that notion. And can hardly be called your ally at this point. For all you know, we might end up fighting."

I paused.

"I might end up killing you for good."

More laughter. Just as feminine and musical as before.

"No you won't!" He sang happily. "No you won't Sully dear! Like I said, I know Hazi-boy! He's not going to be reasonable and take your deal! No sir! He's going to try and (Noble) you bloody. Because he thinks he's soooo much better than you. Than us. You mark my words Sully! My beautiful, beautiful love! He's going to try and (Noble) you and by doing so, he's going to (Noble) himself!"

The laughter redoubled. His petite body shaking alongside the mounds of fat he'd placed about his new disguise.

On the screen, Hazimon began walking towards the body and Randall. The air around his body positively vibrating with the promise of violence.

"You healed my granddaughter." He began without preamble.

"I did." The body confirmed.

"I am not so blind that I do not realize what that means." Hazimon went on. "I have read the ability descriptions and the Titles."

My host laughed so hard at the screen that he almost (Gnome) himself.

"You have yourself a hostage." Hazimon went on. "Why?"

The body shrugged.

"Figured out a workaround for not being able to predict your future or see your mind. Not willing to tell you what it is just yet, but regardless, I saw the end coming. I know you were always planning to kill me."

Hazimon did not even have the decency to deny it.

The body went on.

"Moreover, I realized you were running short on time when you amended the deal. I was growing too strong for you. Too fast. You couldn't afford to kill me half a year from now. Let alone at the end of our original deal's deadline. It might have been too late. I might have been too strong. That, and you couldn't risk me absorbing Randall on my own initiative before then."

Randall himself didn't react to this. Instead standing by with a weary posture.

"I would have gained a bunch of Tier 10 abilities and perhaps many more Titles to boot. I might have been able to overwhelm you and whatever backup you'd managed to gather. Just by the sheer weight of my Psy. Add to that my ability to re-grow out of anyone or anything I'd healed, and you couldn't risk me running loose and fighting a guerrilla war all over the place. Might have caused too much damage to your empire otherwise. Just pop in and [Dominate] everyone against you. Breaking them in ways not even the Drake could have managed."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Hazimon did not move to deny the accusations then either. On the contrary, he huffed his little seahorse nostrils and the gills at either side of his neck and face.

"Why sign the amended deal then?"

"I couldn't be sure then." The body explained. "Couldn't know if that was a fight I could win. Couldn't know if I'd come out on top."

Hazimon nodded slowly.

"But you think you can come out on top now?"

On this side, my host held his breath. Wild pleasure and expectation coloring his big platinum eyes. His eyelashes fluttering in a flirtatious way.

On the other side, the body nodded back.

"I do." It confirmed. "I've taken many, many precautions. Some of which you know of. Some of which I'm fairly certain you haven't caught on to yet. And some, some of which I know you could not possibly have imagined."

"Oh no." Hazimon deadpanned. "I'm so afraid."

"You shouldn't be though." The body reassured him. "This doesn't need to get ugly for you. In fact, my main hope for tonight was to simply talk you out of this."

"Talk me out of this?" Hazimon repeated slowly.

"Yes." The body confirmed once more. "I want to reason with you, Hazimon. I want you to follow through on our deal with no alterations. I want you to let me go on my merry way and I want you to focus on your own gains. On your new Types."

The body raised a hand. As if to forestall any counter-arguments.

"If you do, you get to win. Essentially, you can go home knowing you've gotten everything you wanted out of me and that I will follow through on my deal."

A silence descended on the palace. My host sucking in a breath filled with expectation.

"I will kill the Seeking Drake with you."

Hazimon did not respond.

"Why, I'll even kill him for you." The body went on. "I'll destroy everything he's ever known and I'll hunt him down to his last life. His last victim. I'll make sure he's pursued across all of the multiverse and I'll make sure my Intruders do not rest until they find him and put an end to him."

The body stretched out his hand.

"All while you sit back and work on yourself. You will have more or less guaranteed your own Ascension and you will have a granddaughter who knows what sacrifice is. Who has finally broken free of her hubris. I re-shaped her into just the kind of person you wanted her to be and I also boosted her to the 5th Tier to boot. You can rest easy that she won't die in a ditch somewhere now and you can take her back to your daughter and be a happy family again."

Hazimon looked at the offered hand as if it were a bloody dagger that had just stabbed him. His eyes going from it, to the eyes of the body.

"She will never be free of the fact you healed her." He said without emotion. "And she will never be free of the boost."

He paused.

"In all honesty, Sky Heart was wise to turn you down. I would have preferred that she did die in a ditch like you said, over what has actually happened to her."

My host snickered, but kept his silence. Watching the screen as he bit his long red nails.

Hazimon went on.

"It would have been an honest death at least. This… this cheating." He closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side.

"This is an abomination on everything the Labyrinth stands for. On everything decent Espers have struggled to achieve. Anyone who can't muster up the discipline to seek Ascension with everything they have should never be allowed to progress. That's how you get ill-tempered, undisciplined monsters. The kind that can freely abuse their power because they never knew what it was to truly struggle for it. The kind that never found the wisdom to proceed on their own. The kind that weren't shaped by the struggle. Who didn't get to become better people through knowing what it was to struggle."

He seemed on the verge of tears.

"How would little Deketer ever manage to look one of her old masters in the eyes knowing that she cheated her way to the top? To the place it took them centuries and even millennia to reach? How could she ever hope to stand tall next to them? How could her mother ever look them in the eye? How could I for that matter?"

"You didn't seem to mind when I helped you get a new Type." The body observed.

"That was different." Hazimon lied smoothly. "I fought my way to the top. Breaking down all the walls placed before me. I earned this! I was only being held back by being born a Savant!"

He shouted all of that while conveniently ignoring the fact that he had killed everyone who opposed him precisely because he was born an overpowered Savant. That little tidbit having escaped his skull by way of his ears.

"This… this is foul. What you have done to your people is foul. I… I cannot allow it to happen."

Hazimon looked straight at the body again.

"I was never going to allow it to happen." He sucked in a breath.

"You are correct. I only placed those stipulations on the first contract to distract you. The ones about you boosting my apprentices I mean. I was never going to let you live that long."

Hazimon spat.

"But then I saw more and more of you. Of what you had done prior to our meeting. And even though you'd stagnated, I knew I could not allow you to live outside the Tutorial. I simply couldn't risk it. The new contract would give me everything up front, and then end. Allowing me to kill you."

He stopped and glared.

"More importantly, it would force your hand. If for whatever reason you turned on me, and decided not to boost me with all the Types, the System itself would step in and kill you for it."

He sighed.

"Even now, that was one of my wiser moves. If you refuse to endow me with the Types, you will die regardless."

"But you'll remain stuck forever." The body pointed out. "Have you not considered that, knowing that I would die, I'd just refuse to give them to you?"

Hazimon nodded.

"The thought did cross my mind. Which is why I was hoping to kill you while you didn't know any better. Before you infected quite so many people with the effects of your power and Titles. Before you gained as many extra chances at life. That way, the fallout would have been minimal and enough of humanity would remain that you'd have a decent chance at making a decent faction out of yourselves. Why, I was even planning on taking whomever remained under the Kenari's umbrella of influence. To protect them and to pay you back."

"How very generous." The body deadpanned.

"Yes." Hazimon agreed. "It was generous. But now you've turned down the carrot and so I must bring out the stick."

He brought his hands to his back. Keeping his posture straight and regal. As his short figure were looking down at me and Randall. As if the two of us were bugs before an elephant.

"Endow me with the remaining Types and accept your fate." He commanded. "If you do, I will spare those humans you have not affected and I will take care of them as best I can. I will even take on ten disciples from your species. The ten most talented I can find. And I will train them up to the 3rd Tier or at least as far as they can go. I will never abandon them and I will never abandon your species. Very few of them will actually survive, but that was your own doing. You dammed them by bringing them into this. Accept your fate and the few who you haven't tainted will live in safety and prosperity. Which is more than most species can say out in the Labyrinth."

The body chuckled dryly.

"Why, Hazimon, you make me blush with those generous terms."

The old master barely paused for breath.

"Defy me and leave me at two Types and I will kill your species."

The cave was instantly suffocated by the declaration. All while my host's eyes widened with delight.

"Every, single, one. I will have my vengeance on you for leaving me like this, when you could have helped me Ascend and thereby protect all sentient life in the multiverse. I will make an example out of humanity, upon all the humans in all the dimensions, so that if someone else manages to merge a similar ability, they will know the consequences of defiance."

The body did not say anything for some time. Though Randall cursed under his breath.

"That… is a very serious threat to make. Hazimon."

"I should hope so." Hazimon said calmly. "I am hoping you will see past your own filthy life and choose the better option after all."

The body waited a few more seconds.

"I will give you a chance to retract that threat."

Hazimon snorted.

"Or what?"

"Or I'll have to take it seriously." The body spoke. "I will have to take it as a direct threat on my species. On everyone and everything I've ever loved."

"It is a direct threat on your species." Hazimon pointed out. As if I were stupid. "On everyone and everything you've ever loved. That's the whole point."

The body barreled on.

"I will see you as a gnome."

Hazimon paused.

Hazimon blinked.

Hazimon gaped.

"You'll what?"

"You heard me." The body said. "I will see you and all other Kenari, as gnomes. If you want to drag humanity into this, saying you'll even kill the people I've healed even if I comply, then I will look at all Kenari in the same way."

Hazimon's eyes widened into saucers. Matching those of my host on this side of the screen.

"And this ploy is not really worth it. Hazimon. I could make the best friend you'll ever have. But I could also be your worst nightmare. I will say this one more time, so that even someone as stupid and ignorant as you may understand. If this quarrel stays between you and me, then I will keep to that. But if you threaten innocent humans, then I will threaten innocent Kenari in turn."

Hazimon opened his tubular mouth. Having apparently been stunned into silence by seeing an actual person who had the (Gnome)s to say this to his face.

"So let me be perfectly clear. I will butcher your people. Hazimon. Touch a single hair on a single human's head and I will crucify your kind in their trillions. I will burn down your cities. I will drown your continents in blood. I will go to each and every world and dimension that your kind controls and I will split every planet I see in two. From crust to core. I will keep doing this so long as you threaten humanity and I will match atrocity for atrocity each and every time. And when I grow strong enough to kill you, I will. And after I kill you, I will drag your putrid, rotting (Gnome)ing corpse in front of your daughter and make her eat it. Before I kill her too."

…

….

…..

Randall's eyes wavered for a moment.

Hazimon only blinked repeatedly, as if seeing his own granny getting up from her grave to juggle lemon pies in front of him.

My host did much the same, only he had a face of barely supressed excitement, instead of incredulity.

"And after all of that, I will grab your spirit, Hazimon. Your very essence. And I will torture you myself. In the depth of my realm. In the very heart of Pandemonium. I will sear the last vestiges of what you were in fire for all time. Until the last stars in the last universe finally burn out and fade away into nothingness."

….

…..

……

…….

The silence that followed was deafening. The palace on my end growing utterly still for perhaps the first time in forever.

Hazimon opened his mouth, then closed it again, before opening it once more. Doing this in a loop that turned back in on itself every few seconds.

For my part, I decided to break the silence first.

"I will say this again. This really isn't worth it Hazimon. Not to you. Not to anyone close to you. You could do nothing and walk out of here a winner. It is still up to you. You could take what you came for and let me leave in peace. And all your dreams will have come true."

I paused to let him absorb the words, now that he was finally listening.

"For the last time, this really isn't worth it. Because if you double-cross me, I'll have become your enemy and nothing you do from that point will change that. And then, a minute after I leave anyway, you will be beset by a crushing despair. Knowing that you brought this on yourself."

Hazimon kept blinking rapidly. Incredulity having become the only emotion in his mind.

"We could be the best of friends. Hazimon."

The words struck him like a whip.

"But we could just as easily become the worst of enemies."

The body thrust out his hand.

"So? Will you at least agree to at least keep innocent people out of this?"

…

…

…..

Hazimon spent another two minutes in his stupor. Until he finally realized what it was that I had said and what it was that I was suggesting.

He snarled.

"You will die. Solomon Carter." He swore. "And for every minute you prolong this futile resistance, I will destroy another human world once the Tutorial ends. I promise you that. On my name and my honor."

He gathered himself and glared.

"What's more, you can forget about the pity I would show your people. Give me the Types and I will spare those you did not condemn. That is it. I will not take your people under my wing. Nor will I guide any of you wretched tall gnomes."

Randall sucked in a breath on their side.

My host sucked in a breath on ours.

I just…stared at him.

…

…

….

Looking at the stupid fool in front of me.

"Oh yes. That is what you are after all. Just a bunch of cousin-(Drake)ing gnomes! Who happen to be slightly taller on average! You are no different! Disgusting, unhygienic, filthy little lairs and cheats! Always looking for shortcuts! Always choosing the path of least resistance! You dare to threaten me! Me!? I will see everyone you've ever loved destroyed just for that! You tall-gnome! Just defy me and watch as your mind is rent from existence! Knowing you doomed your own misbegotten gnomish variant of a species!"

….

…..

……

My host moved his head very slowly. From the screen, to my own face.

"Please tell me you've got a comeback." He tittered. "Oh please Sully darling! The tension is killing me!"

I shook my head. So did the body on the screen.

"Rest assured Hazimon, I was always going to share the Types with you."

The body sighed.

"I'm just saddened that it's come to this after all. I wished you'd chosen otherwise."

"Spare me your comments. Gnome." Hazimon spat. "Let's do this already. I cannot stand to be in your presence any longer."

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